Charts - historic SNB interest rates

Graph Swiss interest rate SNB - interest rates last year

Graph Swiss interest rate SNB - long-term graph

SNB - Swiss National Bank

DThe Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the central bank of Switzerland. Since 4 languages are spoken in Switzerland, the names of the bank in the various languages are as follows:

German: Schweizerische Nationalbank

French: Banque Nationale Suisse

Italian: Banca Nazionale Svizzera

Romansh: Banca Naziunala Svizra

The central bank pursues Swiss monetary policy as an independent central bank and issues Swiss francs. The SNB’s most important goals are to safeguard price stability, to prevent high levels of inflation or deflation, and to ensure a climate which is aimed at economic growth. The central bank has set an inflation target of no more than 2% a year for the medium to long term. For an overview of current inflation in Switzerland, click here

3 elements jointly make up the monetary policy of the Swiss national bank:

The SNB decides how price stability is defined.

The monetary policy measures are based on an inflation forecast for the medium term.

SNB target range for the 3 month Libor CHF

When reference is made to the Swiss interest rate dthis usually refers to the SNB target range for the 3 month LIBOR rate CHF. This base rate is also called the reference interest rate and is used by the Swiss central bank to guide the level of interest rates in the Swiss money market. The SNB does that by setting a goal for the 3 month LIBOR rate, the ‘SNB target range’. The Swiss central bank sets both a lower and upper limit and a target within that range. The lower and upper limit are usually around 1 percentage point apart and generally speaking the target is in the middle of the range. The Swiss central bank can thus use its monetary policy to influence the interest rates for products such as loans, savings and mortgages.

This page shows the current and historic values of the SNB target range for the 3 month Libor CHF.